184514Author's Introduction to The Human ComedyHonoré de BalzacGeorge Saintsbury1842

In giving the general title of "The Human Comedy" to a work begun
nearly thirteen years since, it is necessary to explain its motive, to
relate its origin, and briefly sketch its plan, while endeavoring to
speak of these matters as though I had no personal interest in them.
This is not so difficult as the public might imagine. Few works
conduce to much vanity; much labor conduces to great diffidence. This
observation accounts for the study of their own works made by
Corneille, Moliere, and other great writers; if it is impossible to
equal them in their fine conceptions, we may try to imitate them in
this feeling.

The idea of The Human Comedy was at first as a dream to me, one of
those impossible projects which we caress and then let fly; a chimera
that gives us a glimpse of its smiling woman's face, and forthwith
spreads its wings and returns to a heavenly realm of phantasy. But
this chimera, like many another, has become a reality; has its
behests, its tyranny, which must be obeyed.

The idea originated in a comparison between Humanity and Animality.

It is a mistake to suppose that the great dispute which has lately
made a stir, between Cuvier and Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, arose from a
scientific innovation. Unity of structure, under other names, had
occupied the greatest minds during the two previous centuries. As we
read the extraordinary writings of the mystics who studied the
sciences in their relation to infinity, such as Swedenborg,
Saint-Martin, and others, and the works of the greatest authors on
Natural History—Leibnitz, Buffon, Charles Bonnet, etc., we detect in
the monads of Leibnitz, in the organic molecules of Buffon, in the
vegetative force of Needham, in the correlation of similar organs of
Charles Bonnet—who in 1760 was so bold as to write, "Animals vegetate
as plants do"—we detect, I say, the rudiments of the great law of
Self for Self, which lies at the root of Unity of Plan. There is but
one Animal. The Creator works on a single model for every organized
being. "The Animal" is elementary, and takes its external form, or, to
be accurate, the differences in its form, from the environment in
which it is obliged to develop. Zoological species are the result of
these differences. The announcement and defence of this system, which
is indeed in harmony with our preconceived ideas of Divine Power, will
be the eternal glory of Geoffroi Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier's victorious
opponent on this point of higher science, whose triumph was hailed by
Goethe in the last article he wrote.

I, for my part, convinced of this scheme of nature long before the
discussion to which it has given rise, perceived that in this respect
society resembled nature. For does not society modify Man, according
to the conditions in which he lives and acts, into men as manifold as
the species in Zoology? The differences between a soldier, an artisan,
a man of business, a lawyer, an idler, a student, a statesman, a
merchant, a sailor, a poet, a beggar, a priest, are as great, though
not so easy to define, as those between the wolf, the lion, the ass,
the crow, the shark, the seal, the sheep, etc. Thus social species
have always existed, and will always exist, just as there are
zoological species. If Buffon could produce a magnificent work by
attempting to represent in a book the whole realm of zoology, was
there not room for a work of the same kind on society? But the limits
set by nature to the variations of animals have no existence in
society. When Buffon describes the lion, he dismisses the lioness with
a few phrases; but in society a wife is not always the female of the
male. There may be two perfectly dissimilar beings in one household.
The wife of a shopkeeper is sometimes worthy of a prince, and the wife
of a prince is often worthless compared with the wife of an artisan.
The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is
nature plus society. The description of social species would thus be
at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two
sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any
confusion; they turn and rend each other—that is all. Men, too, rend
each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle
far more complicated. Though some savants do not yet admit that the
animal nature flows into human nature through an immense tide of life,
the grocer certainly becomes a peer, and the noble sometimes sinks to
the lowest social grade. Again, Buffon found that life was extremely
simple among animals. Animals have little property, and neither arts
nor sciences; while man, by a law that has yet to be sought, has a
tendency to express his culture, his thoughts, and his life in
everything he appropriates to his use. Though Leuwenhoek, Swammerdam,
Spallanzani, Reaumur, Charles Bonnet, Muller, Haller and other patient
investigators have shown us how interesting are the habits of animals,
those of each kind, are, at least to our eyes, always and in every age
alike; whereas the dress, the manners, the speech, the dwelling of a
prince, a banker, an artist, a citizen, a priest, and a pauper are
absolutely unlike, and change with every phase of civilization.

Hence the work to be written needed a threefold form—men, women, and
things; that is to say, persons and the material expression of their
minds; man, in short, and life.

As we read the dry and discouraging list of events called History, who
can have failed to note that the writers of all periods, in Egypt,
Persia, Greece, and Rome, have forgotten to give us a history of
manners? The fragment of Petronius on the private life of the Romans
excites rather than satisfies our curiosity. It was from observing
this great void in the field of history that the Abbe Barthelemy
devoted his life to a reconstruction of Greek manners in Le Jeune Anacharsis.

But how could such a drama, with the four or five thousand persons
which society offers, be made interesting? How, at the same time,
please the poet, the philosopher, and the masses who want both poetry
and philosophy under striking imagery? Though I could conceive of the
importance and of the poetry of such a history of the human heart, I
saw no way of writing it; for hitherto the most famous story-tellers
had spent their talent in creating two or three typical actors, in
depicting one aspect of life. It was with this idea that I read the
works of Walter Scott. Walter Scott, the modern troubadour, or finder
(trouvere=trouveur), had just then given an aspect of grandeur to a
class of composition unjustly regarded as of the second rank. Is it
not really more difficult to compete with personal and parochial
interests by writing of Daphnis and Chloe, Roland, Amadis, Panurge,
Don Quixote, Manon Lescaut, Clarissa, Lovelace, Robinson Crusoe, Gil
Blas, Ossian, Julie d'Etanges, My Uncle Toby, Werther, Corinne,
Adolphe, Paul and Virginia, Jeanie Deans, Claverhouse, Ivanhoe,
Manfred, Mignon, than to set forth in order facts more or less similar
in every country, to investigate the spirit of laws that have fallen
into desuetude, to review the theories which mislead nations, or, like
some metaphysicians, to explain what Is? In the first place, these
actors, whose existence becomes more prolonged and more authentic than
that of the generations which saw their birth, almost always live
solely on condition of their being a vast reflection of the present.
Conceived in the womb of their own period, the whole heart of humanity
stirs within their frame, which often covers a complete system of
philosophy. Thus Walter Scott raised to the dignity of the philosophy
of History the literature which, from age to age, sets perennial gems
in the poetic crown of every nation where letters are cultivated. He
vivified it with the spirit of the past; he combined drama, dialogue,
portrait, scenery, and description; he fused the marvelous with truth
—the two elements of the times; and he brought poetry into close
contact with the familiarity of the humblest speech. But as he had not
so much devised a system as hit upon a manner in the ardor of his
work, or as its logical outcome, he never thought of connecting his
compositions in such a way as to form a complete history of which each
chapter was a novel, and each novel the picture of a period.

It was by discerning this lack of unity, which in no way detracts from
the Scottish writer's greatness, that I perceived at once the scheme
which would favor the execution of my purpose, and the possibility of
executing it. Though dazzled, so to speak, by Walter Scott's amazing
fertility, always himself and always original, I did not despair, for
I found the source of his genius in the infinite variety of human
nature. Chance is the greatest romancer in the world; we have only to
study it. French society would be the real author; I should only be
the secretary. By drawing up an inventory of vices and virtues, by
collecting the chief facts of the passions, by depicting characters,
by choosing the principal incidents of social life, by composing types
out of a combination of homogeneous characteristics, I might perhaps
succeed in writing the history which so many historians have
neglected: that of Manners. By patience and perseverance I might
produce for France in the nineteenth century the book which we must
all regret that Rome, Athens, Tyre, Memphis, Persia, and India have
not bequeathed to us; that history of their social life which,
prompted by the Abbe Barthelemy, Monteil patiently and steadily tried
to write for the Middle Ages, but in an unattractive form.

This work, so far, was nothing. By adhering to the strict lines of a
reproduction a writer might be a more or less faithful, and more or
less successful, painter of types of humanity, a narrator of the
dramas of private life, an archaeologist of social furniture, a
cataloguer of professions, a registrar of good and evil; but to
deserve the praise of which every artist must be ambitious, must I not
also investigate the reasons or the cause of these social effects,
detect the hidden sense of this vast assembly of figures, passions,
and incidents? And finally, having sought—I will not say having found
—this reason, this motive power, must I not reflect on first
principles, and discover in what particulars societies approach or
deviate from the eternal law of truth and beauty? In spite of the wide
scope of the preliminaries, which might of themselves constitute a
book, the work, to be complete, would need a conclusion. Thus
depicted, society ought to bear in itself the reason of its working.

The law of the writer, in virtue of which he is a writer, and which I
do not hesitate to say makes him the equal, or perhaps the superior,
of the statesman, is his judgment, whatever it may be, on human
affairs, and his absolute devotion to certain principles. Machiavelli,
Hobbes, Bossuet, Leibnitz, Kant, Montesquieu, are the science which
statesmen apply. "A writer ought to have settled opinions on morals
and politics; he should regard himself as a tutor of men; for men need
no masters to teach them to doubt," says Bonald. I took these noble
words as my guide long ago; they are the written law of the
monarchical writer. And those who would confute me by my own words
will find that they have misinterpreted some ironical phrase, or that
they have turned against me a speech given to one of my actors—a
trick peculiar to calumniators.

As to the intimate purpose, the soul of this work, these are the
principles on which it is based.

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and
capabilities; society, far from depraving him, as Rousseau asserts,
improves him, makes him better; but self-interest also develops his
evil tendencies. Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being—as I
have pointed out in the Country Doctor (le Medecin de Campagne)—a
complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man,
is the most powerful element of social order.

In reading attentively the presentment of society cast, as it were,
from the life, with all that is good and all that is bad in it, we
learn this lesson—if thought, or if passion, which combines thought
and feeling, is the vital social element, it is also its destructive
element. In this respect social life is like the life of man. Nations
live long only by moderating their vital energy. Teaching, or rather
education, by religious bodies is the grand principle of life for
nations, the only means of diminishing the sum of evil and increasing
the sum of good in all society. Thought, the living principle of good
and ill, can only be trained, quelled, and guided by religion. The
only possible religion is Christianity (see the letter from Paris in
"Louis Lambert," in which the young mystic explains, a propos to
Swedenborg's doctrines, how there has never been but one religion
since the world began). Christianity created modern nationalities, and
it will preserve them. Hence, no doubt, the necessity for the
monarchical principle. Catholicism and Royalty are twin principles.

As to the limits within which these two principles should be confined
by various institutions, so that they may not become absolute, every
one will feel that a brief preface ought not to be a political
treatise. I cannot, therefore, enter on religious discussions, nor on
the political discussions of the day. I write under the light of two
eternal truths—Religion and Monarchy; two necessities, as they are
shown to be by contemporary events, towards which every writer of
sound sense ought to try to guide the country back. Without being an
enemy to election, which is an excellent principle as a basis of
legislation, I reject election regarded as the only social instrument, especially so badly organized as it now is (1842); for it
fails to represent imposing minorities, whose ideas and interests
would occupy the attention of a monarchical government. Elective power
extended to all gives us government by the masses, the only
irresponsible form of government, under which tyranny is unlimited,
for it calls itself law. Besides, I regard the family and not the
individual as the true social unit. In this respect, at the risk of
being thought retrograde, I side with Bossuet and Bonald instead of
going with modern innovators. Since election has become the only
social instrument, if I myself were to exercise it no contradiction
between my acts and my words should be inferred. An engineer points
out that a bridge is about to fall, that it is dangerous for any one
to cross it; but he crosses it himself when it is the only road to the
town. Napoleon adapted election to the spirit of the French nation
with wonderful skill. The least important members of his Legislative
Body became the most famous orators of the Chamber after the
Restoration. No Chamber has ever been the equal of the Corps Legislatif, comparing them man for man. The elective system of the
Empire was, then, indisputably the best.

Some persons may, perhaps, think that this declaration is somewhat
autocratic and self-assertive. They will quarrel with the novelist for
wanting to be an historian, and will call him to account for writing
politics. I am simply fulfilling an obligation—that is my reply. The
work I have undertaken will be as long as a history; I was compelled
to explain the logic of it, hitherto unrevealed, and its principles
and moral purpose.

Having been obliged to withdraw the prefaces formerly published, in
response to essentially ephemeral criticisms, I will retain only one
remark.

Writers who have a purpose in view, were it only a reversion to
principles familiar in the past because they are eternal, should
always clear the ground. Now every one who, in the domain of ideas,
brings his stone by pointing out an abuse, or setting a mark on some
evil that it may be removed—every such man is stigmatized as immoral.
The accusation of immorality, which has never failed to be cast at the
courageous writer, is, after all, the last that can be brought when
nothing else remains to be said to a romancer. If you are truthful in
your pictures; if by dint of daily and nightly toil you succeed in
writing the most difficult language in the world, the word immoral
is flung in your teeth. Socrates was immoral; Jesus Christ was
immoral; they both were persecuted in the name of the society they
overset or reformed. When a man is to be killed he is taxed with
immorality. These tactics, familiar in party warfare, are a disgrace
to those who use them. Luther and Calvin knew well what they were
about when they shielded themselves behind damaged worldly interests!
And they lived all the days of their life.

When depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity of its
turmoil, it happened—it could not but happen—that the picture
displayed more of evil than of good; that some part of the fresco
represented a guilty couple; and the critics at once raised a cry of
immorality, without pointing out the morality of another position
intended to be a perfect contrast. As the critic knew nothing of the
general plan I could forgive him, all the more because one can no more
hinder criticism than the use of eyes, tongues, and judgment. Also the
time for an impartial verdict is not yet come for me. And, after all,
the author who cannot make up his mind to face the fire of criticism
should no more think of writing than a traveler should start on his
journey counting on a perpetually clear sky. On this point it remains
to be said that the most conscientious moralists doubt greatly whether
society can show as many good actions as bad ones; and in the picture
I have painted of it there are more virtuous figures than
reprehensible ones. Blameworthy actions, faults and crimes, from the
lightest to the most atrocious, always meet with punishment, human or
divine, signal or secret. I have done better than the historian, for I
am free. Cromwell here on earth escaped all punishment but that
inflicted by thoughtful men. And on this point there have been divided
schools. Bossuet even showed some consideration for great regicide.
William of Orange, the usurper, Hugues Capet, another usurper, lived
to old age with no more qualms or fears than Henri IV. or Charles I.
The lives of Catherine II. and of Frederick of Prussia would be
conclusive against any kind of moral law, if they were judged by the
twofold aspect of the morality which guides ordinary mortals, and that
which is in use by crowned heads; for, as Napoleon said, for kings and
statesmen there are the lesser and the higher morality. My scenes of
political life are founded on this profound observation. It is not a
law to history, as it is to romance, to make for a beautiful ideal.
History is, or ought to be, what it was; while romance ought to be
"the better world," as was said by Mme. Necker, one of the most
distinguished thinkers of the last century.

Still, with this noble falsity, romance would be nothing if it were
not true in detail. Walter Scott, obliged as he was to conform to the
ideas of an essentially hypocritical nation, was false to humanity in
his picture of woman, because his models were schismatics. The
Protestant woman has no ideal. She may be chaste, pure, virtuous; but
her unexpansive love will always be as calm and methodical as the
fulfilment of a duty. It might seem as though the Virgin Mary had
chilled the hearts of those sophists who have banished her from heaven
with her treasures of loving kindness. In Protestantism there is no
possible future for the woman who has sinned; while, in the Catholic
Church, the hope of forgiveness makes her sublime. Hence, for the
Protestant writer there is but one Woman, while the Catholic writer
finds a new woman in each new situation. If Walter Scott had been a
Catholic, if he had set himself the task of describing truly the
various phases of society which have successively existed in Scotland,
perhaps the painter of Effie and Alice—the two figures for which he
blamed himself in his later years—might have admitted passion with
its sins and punishments, and the virtues revealed by repentance.
Passion is the sum-total of humanity. Without passion, religion,
history, romance, art, would all be useless.

Some persons, seeing me collect such a mass of facts and paint them as
they are, with passion for their motive power, have supposed, but
wrongly, that I must belong to the school of Sensualism and
Materialism—two aspects of the same thing—Pantheism. But their
misapprehension was perhaps justified—or inevitable. I do not share
the belief in indefinite progress for society as a whole; I believe in
man's improvement in himself. Those who insist on reading in me the
intention to consider man as a finished creation are strangely
mistaken. Seraphita, the doctrine in action of the Christian Buddha,
seems to me an ample answer to this rather heedless accusation.

In certain fragments of this long work I have tried to popularize the
amazing facts, I may say the marvels, of electricity, which in man is
metamorphosed into an incalculable force; but in what way do the
phenomena of brain and nerves, which prove the existence of an
undiscovered world of psychology, modify the necessary and undoubted
relations of the worlds to God? In what way can they shake the
Catholic dogma? Though irrefutable facts should some day place thought
in the class of fluids which are discerned only by their effects while
their substance evades our senses, even when aided by so many
mechanical means, the result will be the same as when Christopher
Columbus detected that the earth is a sphere, and Galileo demonstrated
its rotation. Our future will be unchanged. The wonders of animal
magnetism, with which I have been familiar since 1820; the beautiful
experiments of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the men who have studied
mind as opticians have studied light—two not dissimilar things—point
to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the disciples of St. John,
and of those great thinkers who have established the spiritual world
—the sphere in which are revealed the relations of God and man.

A sure grasp of the purport of this work will make it clear that I
attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent to the eye, to the
acts of individual lives, and to their causes and principles, the
importance which historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of
public national life. The unknown struggle which goes on in a valley
of the Indre between Mme. de Mortsauf and her passion is perhaps as
great as the most famous of battles (Le Lys dans la Vallee). In one
the glory of the victor is at stake; in the other it is heaven. The
misfortunes of the two Birotteaus, the priest and the perfumer, to me
are those of mankind. La Fosseuse (Medecin de Campagne) and Mme.
Graslin (Cure de Village) are almost the sum-total of woman. We all
suffer thus every day. I have had to do a hundred times what
Richardson did but once. Lovelace has a thousand forms, for social
corruption takes the hues of the medium in which it lives. Clarissa,
on the contrary, the lovely image of impassioned virtue, is drawn in
lines of distracting purity. To create a variety of Virgins it needs a
Raphael. In this respect, perhaps literature must yield to painting.

Still, I may be allowed to point out how many irreproachable figures
—as regards their virtue—are to be found in the portions of this
work already published: Pierrette Lorrain, Ursule Mirouet, Constance
Birotteau, La Fosseuse, Eugenie Grandet, Marguerite Claes, Pauline de
Villenoix, Madame Jules, Madame de la Chanterie, Eve Chardon,
Mademoiselle d'Esgrignon, Madame Firmiani, Agathe Rouget, Renee de
Maucombe; besides several figures in the middle-distance, who, though
less conspicuous than these, nevertheless, offer the reader an example
of domestic virtue: Joseph Lebas, Genestas, Benassis, Bonnet the cure,
Minoret the doctor, Pillerault, David Sechard, the two Birotteaus,
Chaperon the priest, Judge Popinot, Bourgeat, the Sauviats, the
Tascherons, and many more. Do not all these solve the difficult
literary problem which consists in making a virtuous person
interesting?

It was no small task to depict the two or three thousand conspicuous
types of a period; for this is, in fact, the number presented to us by
each generation, and which the Human Comedy will require. This crowd
of actors, of characters, this multitude of lives, needed a setting
—if I may be pardoned the expression, a gallery. Hence the very
natural division, as already known, into the Scenes of Private Life, of
Provincial Life, of Parisian, Political, Military, and Country Life.
Under these six heads are classified all the studies of manners which
form the history of society at large, of all its faits et gestes, as
our ancestors would have said. These six classes correspond, indeed,
to familiar conceptions. Each has its own sense and meaning, and
answers to an epoch in the life of man. I may repeat here, but very
briefly, what was written by Felix Davin—a young genius snatched from
literature by an early death. After being informed of my plan, he said
that the Scenes of Private Life represented childhood and youth and
their errors, as the Scenes of Provincial Life represented the age of
passion, scheming, self-interest, and ambition. Then the Scenes of
Parisian Life give a picture of the tastes and vice and unbridled
powers which conduce to the habits peculiar to great cities, where the
extremes of good and evil meet. Each of these divisions has its local
color—Paris and the Provinces—a great social antithesis which held
for me immense resources.

And not man alone, but the principal events of life, fall into classes
by types. There are situations which occur in every life, typical
phases, and this is one of the details I most sought after. I have
tried to give an idea of the different districts of our fine country.
My work has its geography, as it has its genealogy and its families,
its places and things, its persons and their deeds; as it has its
heraldry, its nobles and commonalty, its artisans and peasants, its
politicians and dandies, its army—in short, a whole world of its own.

After describing social life in these three portions, I had to
delineate certain exceptional lives, which comprehend the interests of
many people, or of everybody, and are in a degree outside the general
law. Hence we have Scenes of Political Life. This vast picture of
society being finished and complete, was it not needful to display it
in its most violent phase, beside itself, as it were, either in
self-defence or for the sake of conquest? Hence the Scenes of Military
Life, as yet the most incomplete portion of my work, but for which
room will be allowed in this edition, that it may form part of it when
done. Finally, the Scenes of Country Life are, in a way, the evening
of this long day, if I may so call the social drama. In that part are
to be found the purest natures, and the application of the great
principles of order, politics, and morality.

Such is the foundation, full of actors, full of comedies and
tragedies, on which are raised the Philosophical Studies—the second
part of my work, in which the social instrument of all these effects
is displayed, and the ravages of the mind are painted, feeling after
feeling; the first of the series, The Magic Skin, to some extent
forms a link between the Philosophical Studies and Studies of Manners,
by a work of almost Oriental fancy, in which life itself is shown in a
mortal struggle with the very element of all passion.

Besides these, there will be a series of Analytical Studies, of which
I will say nothing, for one only is published as yet—The Physiology
of Marriage.

In the course of time I purpose writing two more works of this class.
First the Pathology of Social Life, then an Anatomy of Educational
Bodies, and a Monograph on Virtue.

In looking forward to what remains to be done, my readers will perhaps
echo what my publishers say, "Please God to spare you!" I only ask to
be less tormented by men and things than I have hitherto been since I
began this terrific labor. I have had this in my favor, and I thank
God for it, that the talents of the time, the finest characters and
the truest friends, as noble in their private lives as the former are
in public life, have wrung my hand and said, Courage!

And why should I not confess that this friendship, and the testimony
here and there of persons unknown to me, have upheld me in my career,
both against myself and against unjust attacks; against the calumny
which has often persecuted me, against discouragement, and against the
too eager hopefulness whose utterances are misinterpreted as those of
overwhelming conceit? I had resolved to display stolid stoicism in the
face of abuse and insults; but on two occasions base slanders have
necessitated a reply. Though the advocates of forgiveness of injuries
may regret that I should have displayed my skill in literary fence,
there are many Christians who are of opinion that we live in times
when it is as well to show sometimes that silence springs from
generosity.

The vastness of a plan which includes both a history and a criticism
of society, an analysis of its evils, and a discussion of its
principles, authorizes me, I think, in giving to my work the title
under which it now appears—The Human Comedy. Is this too ambitious?
Is it not exact? That, when it is complete, the public must pronounce.

PARIS, July 1842

This work was published before January 1, 1924, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.